Pitching same recipe on 2 day old Yeast Cake

Here's the deal. I have a 7.9 G bucket with the spigot and a grommeted lid for an airlock. Friday night I transferred my amber to secondary with the plan of brewing the same recipe and pitching onto that yeastcake. I succeeded only in transferring the beer to secondary and then got called away. I re-sanitized and refilled my airlock with sanitized water and replaced it in the lid. I will be able to brew tonight. I guess my question is have I waited to long with that yeastcake? My concern is that I had to have drawn air into that grommet hole when transferring to the carboy through the spigot on the bucket. Is there a smell I might be able to pick up on before i go to drop my wort on the cake that will indicate a problem. If it just smells like beer should I be fine? I have a packet of Nottingham dry yeast but this was going to be my first try at dropping on a yeast cake and I was hopeful that I could still get away with the experiment.

Thanks for any and all of your experiences that will help me with this!

I've left mine for up to 3 days before pitching. I recall a couple people on here who have waited up to 2 weeks. You should be fine, I would go for it.

Yeap, after racking I left about 0.5" of beer on the cake and didn't pour in new wort until about 2-3 weeks later. It was fine, actually it took of in about 1 hr!

Go for it...Just use a blow off tube, or have one handy...I don't know if it is common, but when I pitched onto a yeastcake for the first time a btach ago I had a huge amount of bloowoff.

Revvy said:

Go for it...Just use a blow off tube, or have one handy...I don't know if it is common, but when I pitched onto a yeastcake for the first time a btach ago I had a huge amount of bloowoff.

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+1 to the blow off tube....Its going to take off big time, and you dont want your airlock plugging up and blowing off.... I caught mine just in time one night before she blew!!!! And for that I was happy....Now I put a blowoff on everytime for the first few days, then take it off and clean it, and put on an airlock.

I know that I have read about the blowoff in 6.5 gallon carboys and buckets. Have you all had the same experience with the 7.9 gallon buckets?

devaspawn said:

I know that I have read about the blowoff in 6.5 gallon carboys and buckets. Have you all had the same experience with the 7.9 gallon buckets?

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My repitching on the yeastcake WAS in a bucket. I rigged my bottling tube (which I don't use anymore anyway) onto the center post of the airlock and into a bucket of iodophor...glad I did...Had a lot of stuff in the bucket over the next 2 days...And when I popped open my bucket I had 3/4 inches of gunk on the underside of the lid....That was some active yeast there....

devaspawn said:

I know that I have read about the blowoff in 6.5 gallon carboys and buckets. Have you all had the same experience with the 7.9 gallon buckets?

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Definitely go with a blow-off even with the bucket!

I often just scoop out a coffee cup full of trub so I can completely fill the fermenter. That is more than enough...... and +1 on the blow off hose!

I was also wondering how many times do you guys recommend that I reuse the yeast cake.

Without washing it, I've read that you should use it up to three times. I read that after three times, you have some mutated yeast and that it won't be as good to use. I don't really know that for a fact.

If you look into yeast washing, though, you could basically do that indefinitely. I have about 10 grolsch bottles of yeast in my fridge from washed yeast cakes, and I'm using on Wednesday from a yeast I've already used 2 times before.

I've seen on this site that it's not recommended after 4 uses or so...And washing the yeast is a good idea as well...there's a sticky on it here in hbt.

One thing you need to remember is that you should always go darker when pitching onto a yeast cake, to mask any flavors from the previous batch.... When I did it I did an amber ale and then pitched a brown ale onto it...If I was going to continue I would have had to next pitch a porter or stout....but I didn't need any more stouts at the time.

I definitely will be washing yeast on the liquid yeasts. I just didn't figure it was worth it on a dry yeast as they are so cheap. The only reason I through this batch on the yeast cake was just to do it for the first time...to experiment, I guess. I used the same recipe that was previously in that bucket so I am not worried about flavors from the old batch leeching over to the new batch.

Last night I checked the airlock and it was ROCKING! I pulled it out to look real quick to make sure the Krausen wasn't about to be out of control and it was well below the lid. I'll be check that nightly to make sure...